


Rain splatters

by imageability (chamelenyoung)



Series: one hundred percent [1]
Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-11
Updated: 2020-06-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:28:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24618346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chamelenyoung/pseuds/imageability
Summary: People are messy, rain is messy.
Relationships: Byun Baekhyun/Huang Zi Tao | Z.Tao, Do Kyungsoo | D.O/Kim Junmyeon | Suho, Kim Jongdae | Chen/Kim Minseok | Xiumin, Kim Jongin | Kai/Zhang Yi Xing | Lay
Series: one hundred percent [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1783345
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	Rain splatters

Rainstorms. All outbound flights delayed.  
  
His company sets him up in a fancy hotel for the night – the kind where the mini fridge is stocked with imported beverages, and a doorman pulls open gold-covered door handles - and for the first time in weeks, Wu Fan has a respite from being dead on his feet.  
  
He hates having time to himself.  
  
The worst are the paper-textured sheets and the smell of sterilization in the towels.  
  
He usually avoids such rounds of overseas business trips, but then Zhoumi caught him trying to drown himself in a bottle of wine late one night at the office and signed him up. _Travel will do you good_ , he said. Wu Fan isn't so sure. Rushing from one city to another - London, Bern, Tokyo, Seoul – they all start bleeding into the other. The lights, the speeding cars, the constant movement in every direction. It makes him feel like he's stuck somewhere in the middle of all this chaos, unable to move.  
  
The overbearing bellhop clears his throat; he and his plastered smile haven't left the room since the luggage has been dropped off. “Would Sir like a massage?”  
  
Wu Fan knows what that means. He begins to open one of the bottles of overpriced wine.  
  
“We have lovely girls, very talented -” the attendant persists, with the insinuation that all businessman who come alone to this country are the same – opportunistic, carnivorous, and so willing to use exoticism to disguise vice.  
  
Wu Fan sips straight from the bottle as the attendant presses on. He considers whether or not it would be a good idea to get very drunk tonight. Tao never liked it when he got drunk.  
  
“Of course, if you would be more comfortable with a boy?” Wu Fan nearly chokes on his drink in his surprise. Settling upon what he must consider a significant victory, the attendant bombards him with more questions.  
  
Although Wu Fan keeps his mouth firmly shut after that, his mind, for the briefest of moments, succumbs to that inkling of sordid curiosity. Perhaps, it's because that disappointingly slight nudge on his conscience is something he wishes is more significant.  
  
Apathy has been a great tool to him, if not a bit numb and hollow in comfort.  
  
A hour later there's the knock on the door and watching the young man who slips inside his room feels like a douse of icy water. Much too young, he's in a variant of traditional costume that that leaves him looking even thinner. He doesn't lift his head, hands fisted in a posture that might be defiant if he wasn't so recoiled.  
  
The pouring rain seems louder in Wu Fan's head.  
  
The attendant shuts the door behind him with a reminder about the price, and as he leaves, Wu Fan can picture the way his smile is still pasted to his face.  
  
Wu Fan glances at his visitor again and feels a migraine building. He thinks he could dredge up some passable local language, maybe, with some effort. But he is so, incredibly, overwhelmingly tired.   
  
So Wu Fan stays on his sofa a non-threatening distance away, and slowly envelopes himself in a vortex of self-hatred.  
  
Wufan nearly jumps out of his skin when he feels trembling, determined fingers at his shirt. Eyes wide, Wufan feels sleeves sliding off his shoulders before he comes to his senses. "No," he says firmly.  
  
The shirt is already off. Wufan hesitates. He picks up the garment and drapes it around thin shoulders, dragging another one out of a suitcase for himself.   
  
The boy simply stares. His eyes are lined in black. It makes him look like Tao, a little bit, fearlessness and vulnerability all mixed together. Closed, yet open.  
  
Wufan has stopped believing his life course will ever budge much. He knows he's too stubborn, too good at remembering pain, his human goodness too variable.  
  
Wu Fan rises and flips through room service catalogs to find that the only thing they served this late at night are desserts. Regardless of this, he orders a plateful and watches as the boy's posture soften just a little bit as they both stuff themselves on ice cream. His hands don't quite reach the end of the pressed sleeves of Wufan's shirt.  
  
When his time is up, he folds Wufan's collared shirt carefully over the back of a chair, and leaves without a second glance. Wufan pockets the scene.   
  
In a distorted sense, it makes him a little less afraid of the unbearable - it makes everything he's pushed away a little more real.

* * *

Rain. It pounds heavy, clear, breaking, falling - rhythmic in its irregularity. It gurgles in rivets between pipes, between gaps in the pavement, like it will never stop, never hesitate a drop to think about letting up.  
  
Zitao still kind of hates the rain - still hates that that it soaks you, sticks your clothes to your skin, shallows your breath. He used lean against window panes, metal doors, any cool surface for reprieve.  
  
“I’m sorry.” Zitao can't remember what emotions laced Yifan's voice when he had said that, only that his voice was quiet. Quiet enough that the rain through the glass door against Zitao's back could have been loud enough to drown it out, if he had wanted it to.  
  
His mouth racing ahead of his pulse, he makes the mistake of asking why, tasting regret as words slips from Wufan's mouth.  
  
Words like filial duty, responsibility, family, and _normal_ stifle the air between them - Yifan is saying more than they’d ever dared to voice to each other, barely looking at Zitao. The plummeting feeling in his stomach, Zitao realizes, isn’t going away.   
  
Unbidden, he thinks of their first kiss, how complete he had felt, how Yifan had steadied him, how Yifan was never articulate, but sometimes actions speak more than words, how afraid he had been - and Zitao can't stand it anymore. He slams his back against the glass door and runs, feeling water soak down his spine.  
  
These places, he realizes – that warped bench, that knot under the tree, that bookshelf in the library - they'll all be weighed down with memory by tomorrow.  
  
Zitao shivers as the world spins and he runs.

☂ 

In a way, when he looks back, the clues all pointed to this ending, and he should've known.  
  
Either way, Zitao goes through all the daily motions - smiles at the barista who hands him his change, pays his rent on the last possible day, rolls a basketball between his hands and wonders if he should play.  
  
He thinks of that one time, when they were walking near the gardens on campus, and Yifan had stopped at a bench drenched in moonlight, but Zitao only screeched something about serial killers and midterms and the three different papers he had to write - he wonders if things would be different between them, if he had taken that moment to stop too.  
  
There's pain that starts at his heart and drips into his stomach, and sometimes threatens to spill from his eyes, and there's nothing tangible for him to pour it into because it's overwhelming and entirely contained in skin and bone and veins.

☂ 

It takes another half-year for Yifan to graduate and Zitao has accepted the faint ache in chest as a part of him. Under the surface, he doesn’t know anymore if he’s sad, or disappointed, or angry. Maybe it’s just as well that Yifan acts like nothing between them ever happened. For a while, Zitao felt so little of him stir that Yifan could've done anything and Zitao would've been okay with it.  
  
Yixing probably knows, he always knew a little more than he let on - but he just purses his lips, composes silly guitar songs to try to cheer him up, and lets Zitao cry.  
  
It's almost exactly two years after that day in the rain that Zitao gets dragged along by Jongdae to his apartment party. “You need more friends,” Jongdae insists. He introduces him to Baekhyun, a music major at their university - "his EQ is almost as low as yours" - and Zitao is saved from having to make awkward small talk with the guy in his accented Korean when Victoria corners him to interrogate about their last exam. He's only half-answering her questions about pulleys and the mass of the Earth, though, focus scattered as he catches Baekhyun out of the corner of his eye, sneaks glances at his small frame and too-loud laugh.  
  
Later that night, it turns out, their dorms are actually just minutes away from each other, so they take the bus back together.  
  
"Want to see a video of drunk Junmyeonie-hyung?" Baekhyun grins conspiratorially the moment they're out of the alcohol-fumed room, as if they’ve known each other for years. Zitao leans in to watch a shaky video of reserved Junmyeon giddy-drunk, this close to strip teasing to a Girls Day song. Tao laughs so hard in surprise that the ajumma three rows in front of them turns around to scold them. Baekhyun imitates Zitao’s chastised expression until their bus stop, while Zitao tries to maintain a scowl.

☂ 

Baekhyun says he wants to go see the new Marvel movie, and makes Zitao promise to keep him company. They watch the midnight premiere and Baekhyun somehow ends up crashing on Zitao's couch until the next morning.  
  
They get close instantly - just like that. It's probably because Baekhyun has zero sense of personal space and is maddeningly easy to forgive. Tao's never become friends with a person as quickly as he's become friends with Baekhyun, Yixing woefully notes. Zitao thinks about Yifan but says nothing, because no one's really supposed to know about that.  
  
Somehow proper manly movie nights turn into runs of trashy drama episodes that Zitao shamelessly enjoys. Baekhyun tells him what a sop he is, but snuggles up next to him when it starts anyway. Maybe Zitao should feel weird about this - what if they were sitting closer, more entangled? - But somehow it doesn't feel like it should be that way. _Baekhyun is just Baekhyun_ , he tells himself.  
  
"Oh my god, stop being melodramatic, they're going to get back together again, that's how k-dramas work." Baekhyun is lying on his back, methodically taking apart the moth-eaten hole in Zitao's couch.  
  
“Don't spoil it for me!” Zitao wails, covering his face.  
  
Baekhyun rolls his eyes. "This is why we should've watched X-Men." he looks up suddenly from his couch-destroying, focusing on the screen. "Oh, wait, I was wrong. The girl actually dies in this one."  
  
An involuntary sound of distress exits Zitao's mouth, something between a screech and a wail.  
  
"These dramas just screw with you, it's not like they're real life."  
  
"Maybe _you're_ not real life."  
  
Baekhyun attempts to stuff popcorn in Zitao's ear.  
  
"No, but really," Baekhyun says after a brief food fight that has probably ruined Zitao’s rug forever, “You don’t fall in love with someone like that -" he pantomimes being shot in the chest and falls into Zitao’s lap. "If you keep watching these dramas, you'll be single for life."  
  
Tao grins in spite of himself. "Don't you sound experienced?"  
  
"It's not experience, I'm just being realistic. Human nature is greedy."  
  
Tao isn't quite sure how to take that. "I miss six-year-old Baekhyun," he comments, “Jaded isn't your style."  
  
"I'm not afraid of people."  
  
"I've noticed."  
  
"Shut up. It's just - people are messy, and I'm messy too."  
  
"I've noticed."  
  
Baekhyun sticks out his tongue and returns to the task of demolishing Tao’s sofa. 

☂ 

A month later, Baekhyun helps Tao move out of the apartment where traces of Yifan stubbornly linger in dusty edges. Zitao hates that there's always a little corner you haven't smoothed out or turned, that a clean and true ending never really happens.  
  
"Can I throw this out?" Baekhyun holds up a white jacket that Tao had borrowed, accidentally stained, and stuffed in the back of his closet in hopes that Yifan would never ask for it back.  
  
Zitao stares at the kidney-shaped splotch on the sleeve for a moment before replying, "Yeah, it's messed up anyway."  
  
"This is so not your style," Baekhyun muses, "your whole wardrobe is black or leopard-colored," he says, sticking his hands in one of the pockets.  
  
And Zitao is glad that Baekhyun is oblivious because he can't hide the way his face twists. _Pathetic_. He thought he had moved on from this already.  
  
“Hold on, you're not mad at me.” Baekhyun suddenly realizes, retracting his hand from the pocket. He catches Zitao's face as he looks away. “Hey, what's wrong?”  
  
"I don't know," Zitao lies, his voice comes out surprisingly steady. "I'm allergic to you, I guess."  
  
Baekhyun eyebrows crease but he grins anyway.

☂ 

Sometimes Zitao thinks that he and Baekhyun might not be so different from each other after all, but he doesn’t say anything, not after Yifan, anyway.  
  
Sometimes he catches Baekhyun sneaking glances at one of their classmates in the opera class he somehow goaded Zitao into taking.  
  
“Is he in our year? I'm not sure I’ve seen him around.” Zitao asks.  
  
Baekhyun jumps but then relaxes when he realizes it’s just Zitao. “That's 'cause you're a loner.” he replies. “Park Chanyeol. he's dating the president of the classical music club. I don't know what she sees in him, she could totally do better."  
  
Zitao only comments, "His ears are huge."   
  
Baekhyun is comfortable and easygoing, and his eyes curl up into little half crescents when he laughs.

☂ 

Turns out Baekhyun might be worse than Junmyeon when he's drunk.  
  
He calls Tao almost near daybreak, and he sounds so choked up Tao hangs up and runs over to Baekhyun’s in alarm. He's surprised when he's greeted by Baekhyun with a smile on his face. But barely through the first drink, it starts to crack.  
  
“What's wrong?” Zitao keeps asking, and Baekhyun tries to tell him but he ends up shaking his head. “I change my mind. People are the worst.” Tao’s chest tightens and he doesn't know what to say - somehow nothing he says will sound right, because it won’t be the solution.  
  
“I'm here if you if you need me,” he says, leaning Baekhyun's head against his shoulder.  
  
“I hate crying in front of people,” Baekhyun mutters, grasping the front of Zitao’s shirt collar anyway.  
  
“That's okay, I'll just pretend you're drooling or something.”  
  
Zitao almost doesn't hear what Baekhyun asks him next. “Tao...Are we another sad ending waiting to happen?” Baekhyun’s voice is muffled and Zitao hopes he can’t feel his heart rate pick up underneath his shirt.  
  
“We don’t have to be,” Zitao answers slowly, suppressing the initial wave of thoughts that flood his mind. “I know this doesn’t help now, but the way I look at it, for every bad thing, a good thing will happen.”  
  
"Stop being so zen," Baekhyun complains but hugs him tighter.  


☂ 

An hour later, Baekhyun is done with tears, sitting on the couch with vacant eyes. "I feel like one of those cartoons where the soul floats out," he says, "I feel lost."  
  
"What are you talking about?" Zitao wraps him in a hug. "You're right here with me." The tiny grimace Baekhyun gives in response is enough for now.  
  
It wasn’t always like this, but even after everything that's happened, there's very little Zitao would do differently. So many new things happen at the hand of tragedy, he can never really pin anything as a total sad ending. He’s not glad that he lost Yifan, but he wouldn’t trade out Baekhyun for a happy ending either.  
  
It’s raining outside again, but the deafeningly heavy sound is layered with a new awareness of softer tones, of city lights that sparkle through the water, of Baekhyun's warmth under his skin.

* * *

_The skies are bleeding tears_ , writes Jongdae in the margin of his econ homework. _The sound cuts through my ears._  
  
Baekhyun reads over his shoulder. "That's a quality poem there. Please continue."  
  
"They're lyrics, idiot." He starts drawing lightening bolts around the border of the line.  
  
"Oh my."  
  
Jongdae still hasn't deleted those chorus tracks from his phone, the ones with the tenor parts amplified in volume. They're an almost daily reminder of what he no longer can do, but it's impossible to hit the red 'trash' button, just like he can't disentangle his life from the way his past used to revolve around chorus.  
  
"Aww, come on, it's not so bad, you can still listen to my beautiful voice when you want to." Jongdae winced as Baekhyun hits the nail right on the head. "Stop all this moping, I miss your stupid pterodactyl laugh."  
  
Jongdae sighs. "It's not moping, it's brooding."  
  
"You're not nearly handsome enough to brood -"  
  
"So you admit to moping?" Junmyeon, who has been pretending not to eavesdrop, interjects.  
  
"No, I just didn't think Baekhyun actually knew what that word meant." A swipe to the head later - "I don't need to sing," he insists, mostly to himself, "I can still enjoy music in other ways."  
  
Junmyeon replies sagely, "Those words sound nice, Jongdae, but you know you only mean half of them."  
  
"I can sing a couple of notes and I'm grateful for them." He mumbles. That one's completely true.  
  
He doesn't go to chorus rehearsals anymore, even though the semester hasn't ended. There's no point. He's already missed a good handful for his surgery. The conductor frowns but understands.  
  
He has no right to be sulky. He's not a performing arts major, like Kyungsoo - he can afford his voice.  
  
"Maybe you should pick up a new hobby," suggests Jongin from another corner of the room.  
  
"Look who showed up to class!" Baekhyun claps Jongin on the back. Jongdae just snorts. "If you mean 'dance' by hobby, no thanks. You just want to witness me embarrassing myself. Preferably with video evidence."  
  
Baekhyun laughs so hard at the mental image that he rolls out of his seat, alarming some of their classmates in the vicinity. Jongdae thinks that's a little hypocritical. Besides, it wasn't _that_ funny. "Get over yourself, you dance like an intoxicated elephant."  
  
"So do you!"  
  
"Children, settle down," drawls Jongin, and Baekhyun and Jongdae can only glare in retaliation because the professor has walked in.

☂ 

  
He's lost motivation for - well, most things. He amazes himself with the amount of time he can pass ruminating into space or watching music videos he isn't actually interested in.  
  
Kyungsoo notices and tells him to stop feeling sorry for himself.  
  
But that's not it, really, he just somehow feels like someone's hefted a sack of rice on his chest, and he just doesn't feeling getting back up on his feet right this moment, because - where is there to go?  
  
This three-day downpour isn't doing anything for his mood either.  
  
Jongdae's trying to locate the least ear-shattering part of the music department building to finish his theory homework in, when a reedy voice and simple piano chords float down the hall. It's a voice Jongdae doesn't recognize, which was unusual in and of itself. Being former section leader, Jongdae knows every tenor's voice in the department by heart.  
  
He traces the sound to the last room on the east wing of the hall, and immediately regrets kicking the door open because the student there is most decidedly _not_ a music major.  
  
"You're not one of the chorus tenors," Jongdae unnecessarily points out.  
  
"I'm not." His tone is more self-assured that Jongdae would have expected from such a round-cheeked face. He's dressed in light slacks, and a button-down whose recent history involved an iron. He quirks an eyebrow. "I'm signed up for this slot."  
  
Kim Minseok was indeed signed for most of the afternoon.  
  
He finds out later that Minseok is three years his senior, friends with Baekhyun (but then again, who wasn't), and blows off steam after grueling exam weeks by booking himself the room with the nicest upright piano for several hours.   
  
"When I was younger, I think I wanted to be a singer." Minseok says over a sandwich. Baekhyun had rounded them all up during a stray lunch hour, when he found out how many of them knew each other.  
  
"But then I went through puberty and ended up with this squeaky thing," Minseok points at his throat.  
  
"I think your voice sounds nice," says Jongdae before he can stop himself.  
  
Jongdae can feel surprised eyes on him, eyes he hopes aren't saying, _wow, he's such a sappy loser_.  
  
"Thanks, I guess. Kids aren't scared of me, so I guess that's a plus."  
  
"Kids?"  
  
"I'm an education major. Reading and Language Arts specialization."  
  
Jongdae cans suddenly picture it now: little kids climbing all over Minseok, pulling at his face and ears.  
  
"Jongdae just got over bad breakup," Jongin broadcasts insensitively between sips of hot soup. "Maybe you can mope and write bad poetry together."  
  
"Nah, Minseok-hyung is too cool for that." Zitao scoffs. "But maybe you do need new friends."  
  
Yes, Jongdae realizes, he could do with a change of tune.

☂ 

"This is bad," Minseok stresses, after Jongdae could not tell him the difference between most of the first and second tone pronunciations of his recent Chinese vocabulary quiz. "How are you so nonchalant about this?"  
  
"Because I'm not failing."  
  
"Yet," modifies Baekhyun, who was eavesdropping from an adjacent table at the library.  
  
Jongdas raises an eyebrow to say, _Mind your own business_.  
  
Baekhyun doesn't relent. "Midterm today, remember? It's supposed to be the hardest one of the year." 

_Crap._ Jongdae headdesks. Between everything that's been going on, he completely forgot.  
  
"I take it all back," Jongdae whines and latches onto Minseok's arm with desperate eyes. "Save my unworthy soul, hyung."  
  
Minseok, the true education major, puts aside his own learning theory paper and manages to pull a passing grade out of Jongdae in a matter of two hours.  
  
To repay him, Jongdae teaches Minseok an advanced harmony to one of the old-timey ballads he liked to sing.  
  
Minseok scores a extra-large order of steamed buns to celebrate the end of fall semester, and secretly saves a few extra custard buns for Jongdae.  
  
And that's how they find their friendship spilling out of their motley group of friends, to late-night talks, two-player footsie games, impromptu duets, post-dinner walks.  
  
It's on one of these walks in the winter, when daylight fades too soon, the trees are bony and bare, and Jongdae suddenly wants to know what holding Minseok's hand feels like. Jongdae usually has little regard for people's personal space, but it takes everything out of him to only grab Minseok's sleeve.  
  
"Hyung, I'm hungry," he whines, "Let's go somewhere to eat."  
  
"Dinner was barely an hour ago. How old are you?" Minseok asks, but doesn't shrug him off. His palm slides down to find Jongdae's. "Your hands are warm," he notes, and Jongdae feels his chest tighten and his heart lighten all at the same time.  
  
Minseok starts humming an old work tune and Jongdae almost laughs at the dissonance of it all.  
  
"Completely wasted, that voice. To think only ungrateful little snots will ever hear it."  
  
"Hey," Minseok frowns. "I'll have you know one of those little snots might be your governing official one day."  
  
"And they will fondly remember those formative years when their kindergarten teacher sang 'Three Little Bears' to them in class." Minseok cuffs Jongdae around the shoulder.  
  
"Why are you an Econ major, anyway? Was it your parents?"  
  
"No it wasn't. But it's practical and I can find a job with it."  
  
"But you don't like economics - you never talk about it. I swore you were music major until that day you pulled out 'Intermediate Macro' from your backpack."  
  
Jongdae tries not to pull a long face. "I don't hate it. Anyway, a hobby isn't a job."  
  
"Okay." Minseok cocks his head to the side. "I'm not going judge you, but maybe find something in it you can enjoy? That's a sad way to live the rest of your life - there's more than one way to love something."  
  
Jongdae considers this and thinks of the ways Minseok might be right. It was the way he would never again land those solos for chorus pieces, but he could still lose himself in a satisfying harmony when dueting with Minseok. It was that small rush of triumph when after hours of toil, one of his statistical models finally worked. The way he still hasn't been able to throw the sack of rice off his chest, but he could lift it, for a few hours and even days at a time, and remember what it feels like to breath easy.  
  
Tiny steps, inch by inch, he could nudge his life a little closer to somewhere he wanted it to be, couldn't he?  
  
"That's the spirit!" and Minseok's hand tightens around his. "Come on, I think Junmyeon's still working his cafe shift. I think we can trick some leftovers out of him, don't you?"   
  
Under the cover of the darkness, when the stars dot the gloom out of the sky, unbidden lines float up to the surface of Jongdae's mind.

_It's only raining,_  
_I'm not drowning._  
_I'm not singing -_  
_It feels like spring._

* * *

Yixing was born on a gray, rainy October morning.   
  
From that day on, rain seemed to soak every important turning point of Yixing's life. It rained on the day of his first haircut. His first day of primary school. The day he got rejected from that Beijing university he had set his heart on. The day his girlfriend had dropped him and two suitcases off at the airport, and told him to forget about her. Rain's poured on every inflection of Yixing's life, more bad then good, so when Yixing slips one rainy summer day and is righted by Kim Jongin, smirking lopsidedly, he isn't sure how to take it.  
  
"The fuck are you doing out here in this weather?" The weather, admittedly, is terrible - lightning slashing the ink-filled sky and all that, but -  
  
"I lost my credit card." It's Yixing's second this month, and he doesn't fancy having to call up the bank to explain again why he needed another replacement.  
  
"That's a stupid thing to lose." Jongin pins him with a gaze, wearing that demeanor of brash confidence that would be annoying on anyone else (and might even be annoying on him). Here is Kim Jongin, ballet prodigy, dance department heartthrob, striking a casual conversation with someone he hardly knows as if the sky isn't flashing and thundering - and he looks at Yixing as if _he's_ the stupid one.  
  
Yixing nearly slips again when Jongin squats down to pavement level and peers into the soupy puddles and down-trodden grass.  
  
"You don't have to help me, I can find it myself -"  
  
"Sure you can," Jongin rolls his eyes.  
  
It turns out Jongin is right. Yixing wouldn't have found his card in that stray corner of the courtyard, covered in a layer mud. Yixing thanks a smug Jongin, and offers what little compensation he could give, which Jongin waves off. Yixing had mistakenly thought this would be the conclusion of their encounters with each other.

☂ 

The second time they meet, it's as if the forces of nature pull them together. Rather - Jongin, quite literally, spins into Yixing's lap.  
  
"Whoa -" Jongin's sharp-angled, soft-spoken friend hazarded. "I think you made a few too many turns there."  
  
"No I didn't, you asshole. I tripped over the shit you leave all over the floor." Jongin shoots an embarrassed glance towards Yixing and he nods in return.  
  
It's the third day straight of rainstorms this week, and the all-consuming darkness makes Yixing sleepy. If it weren't for these mandatory rehearsals, he'd probably be indulging in a short nap in the comfort of his own dorm. At least, he thinks, the sound of water reaming into the roof covers up some of the ungodly din of the hundred-odd dance department students. For people who rarely orated their performances, they sure could rack up some noise.  
  
The dance department convocation at the start of each year exhibited a dizzying array dance forms, a reflection of the diversity of performing arts sub-departments the university had to offer (and probably their lack of regular collaboration, too). Last year, Yixing had been paired with a ballet dancer, and it was fair to say their two halves of the duet were performed in entirely different planes of existence.  
  
The futility of these full-run rehearsals were somewhat of a running joke. ("It's obviously for the hookups - what else?" he overhears a classmate hiss one day.)  
  
This is the first year Yixing's been granted a solo.  
  
Yixing introduces his piece to a barely attentive audience, and pouts in confusion at the smattering titters that follow his enunciation. Fine, Yixing's Korean still isn’t great. He's never quite worked out when he's supposed to aspirate his sounds and when he isn't. He does admit, though, that while he doesn't mind amusing people, he'd rather be doing it intentionally.  
  
Jongin's expression is unusually dark. "That’s not cool." The fluidity and flow that exuded from his contemporary solo seem to have dissipated in the uproarious applause he received afterwards.  
  
A gutsier one of the students who had laughed looks uneasily between Jongin and Yixing. "Hey, lighten up, we don’t mean any harm - Yixing knows we’re just messing around, right?"  
  
Yixing shrugs with an accepting smile.  
  
"Still, not cool." The set of Jongin mouth is unyielding.

☂ 

Turns out, Jongin isn't finished with featuring in Yixing's life, because he's behind Yixing the whole way to his bus stop after rehearsals. A light mist descends, not enough for an umbrella - not that Yixing has one anyway, there was no point when he'd just be jumping straight into a shower next.  
  
"Can I help you, Jongin-ssi?"  
  
Jongin flushes but scowls all the same. "I take this bus too, you know."  
  
Does he? Interesting. He might very well - the ten-minute bus ride between the dance buildings and his dorms is Yixing's designated time slot to lose himself in thoughts (although this did have the occasional side-effect of landing Yixing further from his dorms than he'd like.)  
  
"I’ve seen you in the practice rooms - you’re like a robot."  
  
Yixing isn’t sure if he’s meant to take that as a compliment, especially from someone who performs contemporary dance, where being robotic is definitely not the goal.  
  
"Seriously - you’re in there all the time. Do you even sleep?"  
  
"I reserve the practice rooms weeks ahead of time." Yixing frowns. Not even the ones with the new mirrors - he knows those are prime real estate.  
  
"No - that's not what I mean," Jongin says in a hurry, "I meant - do you want to be - you know - friends?"  
  
"Friends?" Yixing rolls the word off his tongue as if the feeling were foreign. He has practice partners, colleagues, and dance pupils, but friends are something he hasn't indulged in for a long time. His mild mannered stubbornness doesn't usually win him social points, anyhow.  
  
"Yeah, teach me that pop-y thing you do." Jongin grins, and the naivete of it makes his face look years younger. "I guess you're older than me, huh? Can I call you hyung?"  
  
Weeks later, when Jongin has goaded him into treating him with ice cream after dance practice for the hundredth time, Yixing wonders if this should have always been so simple.

☂ 

When the world rejects Yixing, it rains. Water brings wealth, his grandmother had always said.   
  
Yixing's not thinking of wealth when there's rain pouring into his socks, when memories of padded cotton, rattling bicycle wheels, and fried rice flour are running together with the sting of hospital-issued disinfectant.  
  
A light in the world has flickered away, and Yixing doesn't know how the rest of the world keeps moving at this breakneck pace.  
  
Skeins of colored silk thread, water dripping off the edge of lotus leaves, spools of dusty cassette tapes, a warm gravely voice. Something he'd loved for so long, like a habit, that he wasn't sure how to love anymore.

 _Water brings wealth_ , is what the fortune teller had told them, when Yixing's chart analysis had yielded buckets of water. He had been small enough that he still wore those silver-belled anklets for her to hear what mischief his feet were taking him to.

Her only memories of his performances were on stages too small to encompass his ambitions.

The smell of dirt-packed roads, arthritic fingers tracing stars, shoe-heels worn thin, gritty folktales, patriotic songs.  
  
A pang seeps into Yixing's chest, almost like the way rain settles in the pavement, and he wonders how long it will live there. When the shock doesn't hurt so much, will his mouth still taste of regret?   
  
After that long-distance call had jolted Yixing awake, Jongin wouldn't allow him to take the taxi ride to Incheon alone, because Yixing had been so dazed he hadn't remembered to speak all of his sentences in Korean.  
  
Yixing's flight back to Seoul delays four hours because of unrelenting winds that have descended upon this corner of Asia.  
  
When Yixing returns, Jongin, for all of his fierce charisma, searches his face with such gentleness. "You're not okay, are you?" he asks, voice gruff. "Shit - I'm not good for this kind of stuff - just - just don't go anywhere stupid, okay?"  
  
When Yixing can barely process a beat - other than this practice room, the only place more stupid to go would be out in the record-breaking snowstorm currently piling into campus.   
  
Jongin returns, several moments later, with hot packs, vending machine snacks, an electric blanket, and a bewildering selection of items Yixing couldn't begin to fathom how they would help.  
  
But somehow, they do.  
  
Jongin's solidness, his warmth, at least, staves off some of the cold.

☂ 

At the end fall semester, Yixing stands under a wide purple umbrella (a birthday present, courtesy of Jongin, for "officially being old as hell"), staring up at the department administrative offices. They're massive concrete buildings that in some era probably represented endurance - or whatever - but now were staunch eyesores too unwieldy to demolish.  
  
It's a ridiculously exclusive post-graduate fellowship, and Yixing's not convinced he should go for it. Could he rely on his bad luck, shoddy language acquisition skills, and deteriorating back, once again? Could he really leave his family to grow old and neglected in Hunan, for two more years?  
  
Jongin, who had already submitted his application earlier that week, reads his mind. "I think you should still go for it. One last time, right?"  
  
"Don't you think I should be afraid, Jongin-ah, of losing more each time I put in more?"  
  
Jongin shrugs noncommittally in response. In Yixing's foolhardy journey to seek truth and art and passion - what would his choice be?  
  
Yixing strides up the concrete steps, unlatches the door of the secretary's office, drops off his files in a plastic box, and returns down those steps to find Jongin waiting for him, face split into a boyish grin. "If your life is ruined because of my advice, I'm not taking any responsibility."  
  
Jongin betrays his excitement, jabbering on about choreographers and exhibitions and _New York_ , as if they've both scored auditions already, when Yixing feels an odd change in the air. There's a building sense of what sounds like an army of firetrucks behind him, and Yixing stops. Jongin glances back and curses, and before either of them can react, rain pours down on them in boatfuls, soaks through their clothes, filling their shoes with water. They both blindly search for cover, Yixing frozen in his surprise and Jongin laughing at Yixing's bewilderment. "Come on, don't just stand there," he says, tugging at his hand.  
  
Yixing snaps out of his trance. _Where did he leave his umbrella?_ "When is it ever going to stop raining?" he mutters miserably.  
  
It's awful, and the rain mercilessly beats down on their backs, and his phone is probably a lost cause. But, Yixing realizes, he doesn't think so much about such things when he's with Jongin, when their hands fit together so naturally - and they have somewhere to run at full speed towards.

* * *

Kyungsoo loves the sound of rain. The rhythm of raindrops on pavement, the accompanying smell of drenched earth. Kyungsoo had made the mistake of articulating this to Baekhyun, once, who stared and asked what he was high on.  
  
It's a rare long weekend, and a blissfully rainy one at that. Most students have left the dorm, but some stay, like Kyungsoo. Since morning, he's been sitting on their living room couch with his tablet, in the cool shadows of the rain, alternately contemplating the meaning of life and watching mindless YouTube videos.  
  
The walls are thin, but rain almost drowns out the sounds his floormates make in the dorm. Jongin's loud snoring can be minutely heard, and Kyungsoo can imagine his bird's nest hair, buried in the cocoon of his sheets. Yixing has door closed, strumming a guitar softly. Sehun and Chanyeol are in the suite they share with Baekhyun, noisily engaged in some kind of monster-slaying game. Kyungsoo had declined their invitation to join. Once out of reach, Chanyeol had sent him a LINE sticker, the Moon one that looks equally judgemental and constipated.  
  
Junmyeon pads into the living room a moment later, dressed a little more sloppily than he usually allows himself, wordlessly sinks down in the seat next to Kyungsoo with half a smile. As Dorm President, he's required to be in residence during short breaks.  
  
"The kids are quiet today." he notes. Kyungsoo nods, knowing Junmyeon won't mind his lack of verbalization. Kyungsoo doesn't mind, either, that Junmyeon sits down. Junmyeon, who strives not a burden to anyone. It's the kind of fortitude that gains little respect or admiration from his peers.  
  
But Kyungsoo doesn't mind. Junmyeon is a pillar of calm - maybe by sheer self-restraint - trying hard to maintain equilibrium, balance an argument, scold unruly students however ineffectively.  
  
Junmyeon sits texting his circle of friends, who hold him in high regard but find him a little too normal, finds that he smiles a little too carefully to be very interesting.  
  
"How's your thesis going?" Kyungsoo asks. He's noticed Junmyeon has been staying up later than usual lately, dark circles starting to color in. Nevertheless, the door to his room perpetually stays open.  
  
"Good," Junmyeon answers automatically, absently fingering a strand of hair. He's dyed it recently. Just like his choice to be a theater major, it's part of his unconventional streak that gets buried in the politeness that is Junmyeon.  
  
"What's it about, anyway?" deadpans Kyungsoo, as if Junmyeon hasn't gushed to everyone from Minseok to the housekeeper about his thoughts on the techniques of some forgotten early film director.  
  
Junmyeon laughs and slings a arm around Kyungsoo's shoulder. "Okay, I get it, no one actually cares. Videos about -" he squints at Kyungsoo's screen, "- Sneezing cats are infinitely cooler." Kyungsoo reddens but doesn't close the tab.  
  
Junmyeon hesitates a moment before his next words. "But if you really wanted to know," he raises his eyebrows suggestively, "You'd come to my thesis presentation next month."  
  
Kyungsoo had marked the date and time in his phone when he saw posters for it hanging around campus. "I'll think about it." He says instead.  
  
Junmyeon smiles one of those crinkly smiles that conveys a lot more than he probably means to show.  
  
And they stay like that for a long moment, listening to the sound of fading rain, crackly static of the communal radio's lost signal, Jumyeon's arm a comfortable weight around Kyungsoo's shoulder.


End file.
